


if only my heart were stone

by aspentree



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Breakup, Endgame Sheith, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Originally posted on Amino, Slow Burn, endgame allurance, im not sorry, klance, somewhat happy ending, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-23 11:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14331300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspentree/pseuds/aspentree
Summary: “Was I your first? Your first lover but best friend, your first future.I wanted to be your last. The last one to kiss you; not that it sounds creepy. You were it for me.As it turned out, I wasn’t it for you.”





	if only my heart were stone

**Author's Note:**

> for jo, the love of my life, forever and ever. i love you babe!

I remember when things were easy. We were two lovesick boys, huddled together in the cold, only our bodies and our words to keep us warm. Stories swelled in the spaces between us, filled our minds like thick fog. We smiled, we laughed, we played together. I saved you; you always had my back. When I fell, you picked me back up and dusted off my shorts. Every scraped knee, every black eye, every aching heart, was solved by the intensity of our love.

People used to tell me that kind of love was the type that never ended. The kind of love that just kept going, even if your bodies were gone and turned to ash in the flames of mourning. Our love was the kind of love that survived through words, tears, smiles, kisses.

I kissed your open mouth, drew upon it like a clear, cool stream and I was the thirstiest man in the world; travelled continents every day and traipsed across oceans. I moved mountains, I calmed storms for you. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be without you. I felt your curly brown hair tickle the pads of my fingertips as I combed it for you on your first date. We were only teenagers then. You had a gap between your teeth, freckles covered the expanse of your nose. You smiled at me and you told me, “Yeah, this is the one.”

I remember smiling back, then. I remember you calling me months later, in your car, as the rain drummed furiously against your shitty car windows. You said nothing; sobs wracked your body in a way no illness could. A simple Bandaid would not fix this type of hurt.

So I sat beside you. I murmured ink onto the side of your neck, wrote poetry with your collarbones. I painted a masterpiece across your skin and in turn you did the same to me. I didn’t feel lucky, I felt beautiful. In a way, that was the only thing I could have ever wanted with you. I wanted to stay like this, whispering words to each other in the dark, lighting flames with our lips and quelling thunder with our fingers.

But I guess nobody really gets a fairytale ending, do they?

You used to tell me that everyone had a tragedy sometime during their life. Hiding behind a velvet curtain, curled in your mother’s favorite suitcase, stolen away in your car keys, absorbed into wires and blades and bullets. As if all your life you lay in wait for one singular, immeasurable pain. I grabbed you by your shirt collar, shaking you gently as your wide blue eyes struggled to focus on me. My jaw felt like it was going to shatter like glass at how hard I was clenching it. “Don’t you dare say that,” I said, voice strangled through tears. “Don’t you dare.”

You had nodded, and you never mentioned it again. I remember many sleepless nights tucked away in my mind, worrying over every little thing. What had that meant? Was he not feeling himself? Where was the cheerful, reckless, instinctual boy I had fallen in love with? The little boy with broken blue crayons in his hand, tears coursing down the canyon of his face like a river as he cried; where had he gone? It seemed all that was left was an empty shell of what was.

Little did I know that he was more of an absence of what will be.

We were filled with happiness, in the beginning. I remember asking you out, in the middle of a concert you had dragged me to. You looked so stunningly beautiful; you stole air from my lungs and the thoughts from my head. Oh, God, you blew me away. You were so beautiful it made my heart hurt as if it were breaking. I grabbed your hand, pulled you to me. The drumbeat thrummed through our chest, between our hands. I looked into your eyes, gold lighting making you shine like sunlight, and I said, “Lance, will you give me the opportunity to love you? Completely, with my entire life, heart, and soul. I want to be there for you, stamping stars onto the nightscape of your lips. Please. Do you love me, too?”

Your heartbeat hammered through your fingertips and you tightened our hands together. It was as if the world had stopped spinning, nature was holding its breath. Time slowed, then stopped. My breath caught in my throat. You smiled at me, the biggest smile I had ever seen on your face, and told me yes. You told me yes, and I was the luckiest man in the world. Two boys in a world of hurt, banishing the negativity with a wave of our hands.

I felt as if I were floating. I wanted to take you into my arms and kiss you worth everything I had. But I didn’t.

That may have been my single, greatest regret in my entire life.

“Keith, I love you,” you had said as spears of light tinted your tanned skin red. “I love you.”

***

And that was it. We were two dumb kids, stupid and mad with love. You sat with me at my high school lunch table, spoke with your mouth full, complained about your hair. But I didn’t care; all I cared about were all the times you smiled at me, asked me to follow you through the hallways, touched my arm with the tenderness of someone who knew heartbreak.

“God, I hate that French teacher,” you said to me as we bent over our French notes in the musty school library that smelled suspiciously like marijuana and dust. “ _Zéro étoiles pour elle_.”

“So now we’re ranking teachers like Yelp restaurants?” I said, arching a brow at you across the table. “Is that a thing boyfriends do now?”

“Let me live, Keith,” you whined, blue eyes endlessly deep. Dark circles framed your eyes, as you hadn’t slept in about three days because of intense studying for the end of course exam the next day. “It’s been three days since my last beauty rest.”

“Please stop calling decent sleep ‘beauty rest’,” I sighed, chewing the end of my red ballpoint pen as I edited your essay. We had both written one as practice, since we both knew from Shiro, a senior who I had met during band camp, that it would be a written assessment. “Honestly? Horrible habit of yours. I’m making it an official crime now. You will be arrested if you call sleep beauty rest.”

“What’ll you do if I say that again?” Your voice was lilting, looking up from your notes with that glint in your eye. The glint that made me fall, hard, for you. “Lock me up? Kiss me?”

“God, shut up. I’m trying to edit your paper,” I huffed, circling a few words on the page I had seen a few grammatical errors on.

***

And then we went to college. We dated throughout all four years. It was almost like a dream; you were perfect. We were perfect. Sitting in the campus cafe, sipping our coffee and staring at each other across a two-person table. Trudging our boots through thick, fluffy snow, breathing out blots of white ink out of mouths, frozen against the frigid temperatures. Skinny-dipping in the community pool not far down from the dorm block, unlocking the door with the keys you had stolen from some sophomore, discarding our clothes and swimming in our boxers. Because we didn’t care, if we were caught, not back then. We were too lost in our heads, hands intertwined, just thinking about tomorrow. Our future together.

I graduated college. You were right there with me, donned in our school’s ceremonial graduation robes as the sun shone on our faces. The entire graduating class stood with us in the grass, shoes lined up in orderly rows on the sidewalk. Blades of grass tickled between your toes and you offered me the most brilliant smile, laughing. We took our hats, my fingers rubbing the edge of the silk fabric, and threw them into the sky; a flock of birds racing towards the sun, wanting to be first, first, first.

Was I your first? Your first lover but best friend, your first future.

I wanted to be your last. The last one to kiss you; not that it sounds creepy. You were it for me.

As it turned out, I wasn’t it for you.

Christmases spent with friends, drinking hot apple cider you had prepared the night before. The whole apartment smelled like spices and your embarrassingly fruity shampoo. I loved hugging you from behind as you stood at the sink, peeling the skins from the apples you used to make the cider. It was a paradise, living together. White walls we painted blue, rooms we decorated with your ‘sense of style’.

But time to time, you’d come home, breath smelling like a horrendous mix of alcohol, those beautiful blues struggling to fixate on me. You’d smile, a hand on my sleeve, telling me how beautiful I was. “You’re perfect, Keith,” you mumbled into the fabric of my t-shirt, smiling helplessly. “Perfect.”

I didn’t like it. Over the years, you came home drunk more often, beaten up or just plain depressed. You would drink, forget, and then remember in the morning. Apology after apology after apology; if I could write down every ‘sorry’ and every ‘I didn’t mean it’ I could fill volumes. You would be there one night, hugging my back, your brown hair brushing the nape of my neck as you slept against me; the next morning you would be gone. I would open the front door to get the newspaper, and there you were, tears streaming down your face in rivulets as you begged me to take you back. You’d said you were sorry; you’d cheated on me. You cheated on me.

Eventually I kept forgiving you, biting my lips in the shadow as I saw you kiss someone else, run your hands through someone else’s hair, trace shapes onto someone else’s back.

Until, one day, I didn’t.

I shut the door in your face, locking it, and I instantly went to the couch, eyes filling with tears. Why? I missed everything about us; the way you would smile at me in the fogged-up mirror in the bathroom, brushing our teeth in the morning with red and blue toothbrushes. Making breakfast in the morning, with your groggy, smiling face. Except you wouldn’t remember, you wouldn’t know.

I said, “Fuck you,” to someone who wasn’t there, whispering goodbyes as if you were still here.

The apartment smelled like bittersweet, salty tears as I curled up, shuddering and covering my eyes with the sleeves of my sweater.

Breakups are horrible. I stared at my phone in the dead of night, scrolling through our text messages we used to send, smiling through tears. I tasted iron in my mouth. I couldn’t stand it. Maybe you were somewhere else, not even worrying about me. You’d had enough of me, surely, a long time ago. We’re twenty five, anyway. Three years out of college and I’m still a hot mess.

Years passed by, tears dried up. I met someone new, someone reliable. He showed up one day, at the movie theatre. He looked so lost; as if he were waiting for someone. Half an hour went by, and he began to lose hope. I was going to see a different movie, but I offered to see one with him. He said yes.

We fell, like that. I never quite understood the term ‘falling in love’. It wasn’t as if I was sinking. I felt like I could fly, wings spread wide.

I left that apartment, put it up for sale. Gathered all my things, throwing away your blue toothbrush that still lay, untouched by the sink. Tossing out your floral shampoo and what was left of your apple cider recipe. I moved in with Shiro, the boy I had met at band camp, the man I had met once again at the movie theatre. A strong connection formed between us; stronger than I had ever felt between you and I. I couldn’t describe how elated that made me feel. Even though two years had gone since I dated you, I still thought about you.

Even more time passed. Shiro and I adopted two wonderful children from the orphanage deeper in the city, naming them Akira and Ophelia. We raised them together. I drove them to preschool, to kindergarten, to elementary school. Eventually, to middle school, where we are now. Tying Ophelia’s hair up, watching Akira hold her hand as they went in for their first day together.

I don’t know why I did it. You never deleted my number, I never deleted yours. Shiro said I needed the closure.

You’re there, stunning, your azure eyes full of knowing they hadn’t possessed before, when we were two boys without a care in the world. A woman hangs on your arm, ethereal blue-white hair curling around her shoulders and down her back like wisps of steam. Shiro and I sat next to each other, you and the girl across from us.

We talked, Shiro and the woman, whose name I later learned to be Allura, getting to know each other. I barely noticed; all I saw was your lips moving, and the guilt in my heart lessened.

“You know,” you said, tracing a slender finger on the surface of the wooden table, “our dreams would have never meshed together. You wanted to hit it big with the photography, I was messing around with things I didn’t know what to do with. I’m...I’m glad we broke up.”

I found myself nodding, genuinely. It all made sense now; I had clung to delusions of success, like all people do. You weren’t right for me, I realized.

As the evening drew to a close, you hung back to talk to me, a soft, gentle smile curving your lips in that same inviting way that had drove me insane all those years ago. “I hope we can still stay friends.”

“Of course.”

We left that restaurant, my heart healed over that hole that was shaped like you. Shiro squeezed my hand, looking deeply into my eyes with his slate grey irises. “You okay?”

I inhaled, smiling. “Yeah. Thank you.”

“For you? Endlessly,” he smiled.

I can’t say I ever stopped loving you, not even after that. Maybe not romantically, but platonically. You dropped by sometimes, for visits. You pulled Ophelia and Akira up to you, even if they were getting older and your strength was flagging. You smiled at them, telling how much you loved them, and they would always call you Uncle Lance. Your girlfriend; wife, now, got along with them perfectly. She was their anchor.

I don’t regret any of it, now that I’m alone again. My children huddled around me as I lay in this hospital bed, their own children hiding behind Ophelia’s skirts and Akira’s legs as they did mine. I smile, and close my eyes.

We’ll meet again, I hope.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading this!! it took a lot of work to make and i am so happy for all your positive feedback. 
> 
> keep on shining!!
> 
> find me on tumblr: @ferxanitii


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